Top 10 Essential URL Shorteners

URL shorteners are services in which, let’s say, a long-ish URL is inserted and at the click of a button, the URL is shortened to a maximum 10-character code. When anyone clicks on this code, they are directed to the original URL.

Use of URL Shorteners

The important usages are:

Sharing of blog posts on social networking sites;

Tracking visitors & conversions

Top 10 Essential URL Shorteners

There are 100+ URL shortening services. Here, I give you the best of the lot, according to my observation. Your choices can vary so feel free to share it with us.

1. Goo.gl

This is the official tool from Google which not only allows you to shorten unlimited URL’s but helps you track traffic / visits from its very easy-to-access dashboard.

2. Bit.ly

This is a popular and perhaps the oldest tool to share shortened URL’s and builds traffic. The dashboard shows detailed stats of views and clicks, and also gives you access to developer tools and side bar bookmarklet.

3. Ow.ly

This is a very clean and non-obtrusive tool with great sharing functionalities like tracking. You can also bookmark re-tweeted links and check out visitor stats.

4. DyingLinks.com

This is my personal favorite & I would recommend using this for promotions. With this tool, you can decide when the shortened URL will be ‘live’ and ‘die’. You can give the link a custom name and also decide on a specific number of clicks after which the shortened URL will cease to function. Amazing?

5. TinyURL.com

This is another of my favorite URL shorteners with which you can promote affiliate links, redirect URL’s and use custom names for links.

6. SnipURL.com

This is a mass URL shortening tool and comes with an API to create short URL’s in the active browser.

7. Su.pr

Like Google’s Goo.gl tool, Su.pr is the official URL shortening tool from StumbleUpon.com. This tool, besides URL shortening, allows you to syndicate content three ways between StumbleUpon.com, Twitter.com and Facebook.com. You can also schedule posts and the tool recommends the best time to post as per your activity and responses.

8. Is.gd & V.gd

Apart from their easy to remember names, these tools allow you to create Quick Response (QR) codes for the shortened links. You can track traffic from dashboard and preview links before sharing.

9. Scr.im

If you don’t want to share your ‘real’ email ID with unknown people YET have to use the ID to allow others to contact you, use scr.im tool. Enter your email id and the tool will convert it into a non-recognizable format, which you can share anywhere on the web without bothering about stalkers and spammers.

10. Yi.tl

This URL shortening tool enables you to add ‘categories’ to the shortened links to divide the links properly and assist in easy retrieval in future.

Conclusion

If you’re into heavy online promotions, using any of these URL shorteners will be a big help. Don’t you agree?